Description of the attraction
The organ hall in Livadia was built simultaneously with the Livadia Palace. Initially, there was a power plant built from monolithic reinforced concrete in 1910-11 at the same time as the Livadia Palace according to the project of the architect G. P. Gushchin.
In 1927, the power plant was dismantled, and a sanatorium club-dining room was placed in the premises. In 1945, during the Yalta Conference, the power plant was activated again. Later, a camp for German prisoners of war was established here, then - workshops and warehouses. When the organ was being built here, the building was in disrepair. Today the organ has been installed in an elegant and large hall with stained-glass windows. If earlier guests visited Livadia for the sake of the palace and the park, today many are interested in organ music.
The Livadia organ can be considered special because it was created by the great craftsman Vladimir Khromchenko. He came to Yalta as a graduate of the Tallinn Academy of Music as an organist, but he was offered only a piano, and the musician conceived the unreal. He ordered the necessary literature, drawings and diagrams abroad, and began to select material. Such calculations require deep knowledge of physics and mathematics, and the source materials require great accuracy from the master. Vladimir Anatolyevich worked very actively, this work gave him great pleasure and determined his meaning of life in the future.
Thus, a small organ was erected for the music school, later another one, which was intended for the Armenian temple. The organ hall in Livadia was created in 1998.
The old, neglected building of the Livadia Palace power plant is decorated with stained glass windows, and its ceiling is decorated with patterned stucco molding. The organ itself is very decorated and brightly colored. It is conceived in such a way that music can overwhelm the parishioners with its greatness, so that sounds pour from the sky, like an omen, like the voice of the Most High. However, there is no feeling of depression, but on the contrary - there is a feeling of celebration and spiritual freedom.
The organ hall in Livadia is used for concerts of secular and sacred music. All pipes, in the amount of 4800, the smallest of which is a few millimeters, and the largest - more than 3 meters, according to experts, sound even better than the branded ones that are brought from the Czech Republic and Germany. Almost a third of the pipes are made of wood of such species as cedar, cypress, palm, sequoia … Maybe this is what gives the Livadia organ an inimitable, special timbre. In this hall every year organists from different parts of the world meet and international festivals are held. Livadia is the only place in the post-Soviet space where organs are created. And this is the only place in the whole world where there is an amazing master who knows how to create them by hand.
